


The Quiet Grave

by mermaidism



Category: Penny Dreadful (TV)
Genre: Christ parallels, F/M, Gen, Loss, Love, Redemption, Religion, and give her some kind of resurrection, because if you're going to do something as stupid as kill vanessa ives you've gotta follow through, even if it's just in the lives of the people who loved her
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-30
Updated: 2016-10-30
Packaged: 2018-08-28 01:10:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,610
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8424754
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mermaidism/pseuds/mermaidism
Summary: vanessa ives is gone, but never forgotten by the ones who loved her.neither does she forget them.





	

The grave is quiet. There is no question of this. The lilies bloom there and the grass is green and the cypress trees throw shadows and sunlight. The sleeper beneath the earth does not toss or turn; she is restful, at peace. She returns to dust with a smile on her pale lips. And in the cold fist of the English winter, the snow blankets the earth, layer on layer, and the little cemetery seems to sigh; snug, contented, silent.

The tall, slender gravestone at the back is the most beautiful one of all, especially in the winter. It is simple, unassuming; elegant dark marble engraved only with a name and the word _Beloved_. It does not crumble or crack with the withering seasons and the heavy snows. It stands alone, crowned always with white flowers, proud and unchanged.  And the smiling sleeper lies in the earth, and the earth in her.

No more will she walk with those whom she loved.

And yet…

 

\---

 

He is Professor Murray now. In another year or so, his beard will be snowy white. In another year, he will be an old man. Not the kind of man who only says he is old; smiling a cunning smile that is still handsome for all its fine lines, but the kind of man who knows in his bones that he is old. That the days of glory and the pursuit of valor have gone away, and all that is left to him is a feeble shadow of who he had been before. In a year or so, Malcom Murray knows that he will be the kind of man who will never see Africa again.

He thinks often of his children. Of his sons and his daughters. Some fair and some dark. And one who burned like a saint. He sees her smiling in the firelight. Her smile is warm and true. It breaks like the dawn in the dark. (He moves his chair closer. Ethan finds him in the morning. His jacket is singed and the embers are dying. But Malcom Murray sleeps with a smile.)

Victor comes for supper every Sunday. They read the paper in silence, and Victor asks after Sir Malcom’s students at the university. Ethan can get Sir Malcom to share the old tales of Africa, but Victor prefers to hear pieces of his lectures on geography and cartography. And across from Sir Malcom, the chair that was hers stands empty. But the air seems to shimmer in that place with their laughter and their remembrances, as if something with feathers sits hidden but listening, stirring like beetles’ wings.

One stormy September, he finds the box of letters in her wardrobe. Hundreds of them. Her hand spidering across them all and Mina’s name again and again like a prayer. (The old man does not know which daughter he misses more.) He burns the letters in the fireplace after he reads them. The quest they started is long over. As is her suffering. He knows this. It does not do to dwell on what has come before.

He no longer dreams of the dead. Never again will their cold white hands stretch out to him; their mouths gasping his name. Their red eyes and rot trouble him no more. Her scorpion still guards the cast iron of his door, and she smiles on him from the fireplace.

Malcom Murray has never prayed to a god. He has never believed in one.

But he prays to her.

And in his dreamless slumber, she answers him.

 

\---

 

A man stands before the marble grave. The snow is melting and the crocus is creeping toward the sun. This man’s high collar and black gloves hide the scars where once a needle had torn. If she was alive, she would not recognize the Victor Frankenstein who comes to speak to her. He is still thin and quiet, but his eyes are clear and his hands do not shake. The early spring wind has filled his face with color. He smiles and he means it.

“You would like her. She rides like a heathen and she wears her hair long. She reads at the breakfast table and she makes me laugh. I don’t know that you ever heard me laugh. By the time I met you, I’d forgotten how to do it.”

Victor Frankenstein reaches out to brush the black marble. The old needle-pocks tingle.

“You would have liked her. She makes me think of life and not of death. I’ve taken up gardening. Me! Can’t you just see it? She started it of course. She gave me a bonsai and bet me sixpence I couldn’t keep it alive.”

The thin man with the clear eyes smiles. The cemetery is, as ever, silent.

“Her name is Elizabeth, and I’m going to marry her. I’m going to be happy. You’ll be proud of me for that. I wish you were here to see it. You wouldn’t believe your eyes.”

(The breezes quicken. They kiss his cheek as he turns away.)

 

\---

 

Ethan Chandler sees her everywhere. The moonlight is her bare shoulders, her pearled teeth as they bit (gently) into his bottom lip. One of the scullery maids sings the song that Vanessa used to hum under her breath. The words this little girl sings are different, happier…something about a star and an Irish town. (Ethan wonders if this is her trying to tell him that she is at peace. If this is her way of saying that she forgives him.)

He finds the cross at a stall in the wharf market. It immediately reminds him of her. She too was slender and dark-grained; beautiful and suffering. He buys it on impulse and hangs it in the bare spot in the room where she used to sleep. The room where she first asked him to stop her heart. (Where he used to dream of sleeping beside her, his rough hands tangled in her long black hair.) He shakes his head. Those dreams do no good now.

Some nights he goes into that room when he cannot sleep, and that is often enough, anymore. His knees find the indentations her own left upon the panels. They fit like a bullet in its casing. In the darkness, Ethan Chandler thinks of the angry red cross that blossomed between her shoulder blades and he curses her for trying to carry it alone. Even Christ did not do such a thing; he, after all, had the Cyrene to help bear his burden. The moonlight caresses the tears on his face. The drapes in the open window shift in the night air. It is the same sound her skirts made upon the dancefloor. Ethan Chandler thinks for a moment that if he turns around, he will see her standing there with her long arms open and that sharp-toothed smile on her face. If she is there, she never reveals herself to him. (He hears her heartbeat all the same.)

The morning after he hangs the cross, Ethan Chandler puts his guns away and throws the bullets into the ocean like skipping stones. There is only one way now. One way to see her again; only one way he will be allowed to take her in his arms. Perhaps it is too late. He can never shake the full moon from his skin. He knows there is a red river that runs behind him, but he tries anyway. He might be a wolf, but he is _her_ wolf; hers and God’s. Their god is said to be all-forgiving. He puts his faith in hers.

He prays.

 

\---

 

The caretaker of Highgate Cemetery is reportedly more creature than man. But no one complains. It’s not a job that’s likely to be filled by anyone else. He is quiet and serious. He digs the graves carefully and correctly. He keeps the headstones neat and speaks kindly to mourners. He is careful to never look them in the eye. He does not mind the dead, and the dead do not mind him. If one was to study this creature, one would notice that he pays especial attention to a tall stone near the back. This green place blooms over with lilies and camellias. One might suspect that the caretaker planted the flowers himself by the watchful care he visits upon them.

Sometimes at night, one might see this creature kneeling beside this black headstone. He has a book in his hands and he is speaking as one might to a beloved child. If one were to come upon this scene, one would hang back, touched by the tenderness in that voice and wanting to hear more closely the words that he is speaking to someone unseen in the moonlight. Usually it is Tennyson, but sometimes it is Shelley and sometimes it is Shakespeare. One day it will be Thomas and Frost. One day it will even be Neruda.

On that day, the grave will still be green and the white flowers will still be blooming.

 

\---

 

It is so easy to believe that she walks beside them. So easy to see her laughing in her boyish way out of the corner of an eye. It is so easy to feel her touch in a breath of wind, to see her in the lamplight and the fog and the moon and the camellias. Surely, when they dream of her they awaken peacefully, the warm imprint of her white hand still soft upon their cheek. Surely she has just left the room, and she will be waiting for them downstairs, wanting to know how they slept…

 

But the grave is quiet.

 

 

 

END


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